jesus of nazareth," came out last year. you've been watching booktv on c-span c-span2. professor aslan, thank you. >> guest: thank you. i really enjoyed it. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> next on booktv, john yu argues that international law has very little effect on the behavior of powerful nations when they deal with each other but acts as an impediment when powerful countries try to do things like fight terrorism and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. this discussion is about an hour and a half. ..

panelist comments and i might throw in a point or two as well, and then following that we'll open up the floor to your questions, and have a good, robust discussion, i'm sure. before turning the mic over to downare john, let me introduce our two guest panelists. as you can see from the biographical merles you have in hand, both have had quite distinguished careers. michael is a professor another

law at ohio northern university, former navy pilot, harvard law graduate, graduate of the nave's top gun program. michael has written extensively in the areas of the laws of war some the laws of war as applied to the current war on terrorism. harvey chair the aba's ad advisory committee on national security and a former professor at the national war canaling -- war college, and he was a legal counsel to the fbi's deputy director and has had his hand in drafting

this is my tenth never here and it's -- ten inch anniversary and this book is a product of that ten years. i started working on it when i came here after the iraq war,

and this is my effort to try to make sense of the iraq war, and the afghanistan war and allow the other conflicts we have been going through as a country. it's also great to have gary as the moderator. a perfect person. one of the few people who shares an intense interest in the framers and national security and intelligence, and i would be remiss if i didn't say that i had stolen one of gary's great ideas from his dissertation on my last book on thomas jefferson's views on executive power. gary has the opinion that jefferson had a robust approach to the presidency in practice but not in theory, and i had tried to disseminate that idea through my own work and you were the first one to realize that and to explore it. also a great pleasure to be here with mike lewis. mike was on the front lines.

mar have i was at the national war college on the rear lines, i guess, and it's great to -- i want to make one recognition of my mentor for many years, judge lawrence silverman is here. he is angry for writing the book and claim is stole the idea from him. with many other things i admit, i dill -- did steal it from him but he didn't publish fast enough. i got there first.

i think they aren't do it today under the u.n. charter itself. to have been plenty of wars since the u.n. charter, never authorized by the u.n. and were not in self-defense. and the u.n., i think, has been powerless to stop and it the

invasion of ukraine is a good example. part of it is the rule and part of it is the institution, that if you require the full agreement of the permanent members of the security council to authorize measures against any kind of aggression, and china and russia sit on the security council, they're going to veto any effort to respond to an invasion of crimea, or looking down the future, any military engagements that might arise in the south china sea or in asia. which essentially renders not just the rule being denied practice but means institutionally the u.n. charter -- the american-led effort to create a system to manage conflict after world war~ii just doesn't work and has failed. it's not going to work for the future. that done mean that great power war is an

actually, a certain kind of war is actually under supply because of this ban on international law on any use of force other than self-defense. actually prevents we were al -- bern allies and the united states from intervening to shore up the international system.

so rwanda, kosovo. iraq, all places -- the ukraine. the south china sea. all areas where the system actually prevents, discourages nations from using force where we might want to because the gains to the world will be much higher than any costs of conflict under international law they would be illegal and the international system ought to encourage the powers to use force to control those kinds of threats to international system. it doesn't need to worry about war between the great powers where international law does nat have much affect, and the peace has been kept for other reasons. >> one last way to understand this thesis, this is very similar to the way law and economic scholars think about contract law or tort law.

there may be a rule. you

which i think would be consistent with this approach but which may well be seen as troublesome and potentially illegal under the u.n. charter. the first thing i would say is the united states should terminate the s.t.a.r.t. treaty. the s.t.a.r.t. treaty is the one that spoke for the u.s. and russia to 1550 nuclear weapons, places other limits on the delivery vehicles but it's an effort to treat the united states and russia as the same when it comes to nuclear arsenals even though russia is not really projecting power around the world anymore and the u.s. has a lot of

responsibilities for peace and stability. doesn't make any sense for united states to treat russia as an equal it seems to me we could terminate the treaty and the nuclear arsenal can flow to whereever it needs to be for our security obligations rather than any kind of commitment. obviously the second thing and this is the position president obama taken laysha about how these trying to hit single foreign policy and not devils and certainly not homers and it seems to me in ukraine right now we are looking at called third strikes because only military aid were given to meals ready to be. even under president carter when the soviets invaded afghanistan we did more than give the afghan rebels food. seems to me another thing we could do. this would be very difficult under the charter but under the set of rules that would be fine to give military aid to ukraine

and like president carter did in afghanistan supplied new rebels that there might be in the ukrainian region under russian control. the third thing we can do is to restore the anti-ballistic missile systems in eastern europe that the obama administration pulled paul vallas of diplomatic offering of a reset in relations. that has clearly failed. if russia wants to go around invading its neighbors united states can send a strong signal of support for its allies without any boots on the ground without any military proffer with russia by putting the systems out. the abm system and help the russian soviets go bankrupt and health injury to the fall of the soviet union why not give it another try? and then the last thing i would say is we should than our cooperation with russia on syr syria. i don't see why the u.s. should be a partner with russia in an action which is having the effect of propping up the syrian regime and actually switching

the momentum of the civil war towards the assad regime. and lastly i think this is very difficult to see this happening quickly but it could happen in the longer term is institutionally created an alternative to the u.n. and the security council where we don't give permanent fee goes to authoritarian governments like russia and china. something in the book i call a concert of democracies where you still need an institution of process to legitimize the use of force then create one. it doesn't have to be focused around the u.n. and the charter. it can be focused around those countries that are democracies and have open markets and have the same value system as the united states. so with that thank you very much and i look forward to comments. >> thank you all for coming out and aei for having me here. i think professor u is

absolutely right that the u.n. security council is broken that the permanent veto is going to prove it. the use of force in places where the use of force would improve human welfare. he had mentioned that the number of great power wars and the people that died in great power wars has diminished to near zero since the institution of the united nations but at the same time the number of internal struggles, civil wars, low intensity conflicts around the world has gone way up as have the number of people dying in those conflicts all over the world. and the idea of saying you can improve human welfare by intervening in these conflicts and preventing these conflicts from having the kind of humanitarian disasters that they become in many cases is a legitimate use of force but it's a use of force that is absolutely forbidden by the u.n. charter now unless we can get russia china and the united

states to agree at the same time that this is a place where we want to use force. the only other exception would be article li self-defense and in most cases that does not apply. another point professor yoo makes in his book is that there is at least an undercurrent of nations that have three state practice indicated a willingness to go beyond where the u.n. charter says they are supposed to go. in terms of using force to prevent either humanitarian crises or other kind of disasters so kind of disasters so whether it be tanzania intervening in uganda or vietnam and cambodia or india and bangladesh all of which were unilateral interventions or a collective intervention like nato in kosovo where you had a group get together and decide we need to stop the humanitarian crisis in kosovo. those have all been criticized

at some level or another but they have also all been praised as some level or another for the kinds of good they have done. the central theme are one of the central themes to the book though is to say how do we figure out when a war is going to be a net benefit to human welfare? if it has an economic sense to it and it says you have to downgrade here are the benefits that are going to a group from using force here. here are the lives that will be saved and here are the lives that will be improved as a result of doing whatever happens whether it be libya, syria, iran etc.. and while that is a laudable idea in practice it's going to be very difficult and i think we can look at perhaps the best way to look at things is to look at the example which would be rawanda. everybody looks at that and says how could 800,000, 2 million

people have been killed with missions of small-arms mid-20th century while all of europe and the rest of the world stood by and watched. it seems like it cries out for intervention but looking at the one intervention that has happened in the last few years, libya is a good example of the indeterminacy of the good that is done and i guess what i mean by that is whenever you intervene and intervention is a nice word that what you are doing is killing. you are going to go and kill people, whether it be the libyan command control and communications people or the air defense people or some of the libyan special ground forces that we attacked, you are going to kill those people and sometimes you kill the wrong people. you are going to kill civilians and have collateral damage. the french and the british were criticized for the amount of collateral damage and strikes in

libya that killed civilians when they were going after command and control in tripoli. and so you will steal the say that these are people that died that should not have. now you tell me who you saved. i don't know how we can know exactly how many people were saved by libya. i don't know what the estimates are that the best you can do is come up with a historical counterfactual thing if we had not done this is what would have happened and you are going to have to convince skeptics and other nations that are opposed to the action that this in fact would have been the case. i guarantee you that had we intervened in rwanda, if you were going to turn around and try to convince the world that you had saved 800,000 lives by being in rawanda there's no way anyone would have believed you. it would have been a neo-colonialist acts by the french the belgians the americans to go back in and reestablish control over a lost

colony and no one would have believed that you saved 800,000 lives by doing so. and the counterfactual nature of this means that while i agree that there is intervention that intervention should be undertaken on a number of occasions, that if you do so you have to be very clear-eyed about the fact that no one is going to thank you for doing it. nobody is going to look back and say it was a great thing you did. nobody is telling us that for libya. nobody is telling us.and so as long as you don't expect people to thank you and don't expect people to fully support everything you do because corporal geopolitical reasons i guarantee russia, china and others will criticize any of those actions you take and you have to be prepared to accept that and do the best you can can to back up the claim that hears the counterfactual that we avoided.

>> excellent. thank you so much. i have been here before and it's always great to have a form might this that dedicated to the john stuart mill principle of having open debate about interesting and hard subjects. these are my remarks and are not affiliated with the groups i'm associated or involved with. this is quite fascinating for me because i am -- john's tenth anniversary he has revealed himself to be a canadian, international idealist interventionists. which is fascinating and the book which i find intriguing in an earlier word would have found extremely compelling is the current ambassador for united the united states samantha powers. if you read the book you could

make a strong argument that john has become samantha. that happens all the time. so why is that? it is because first of all it's a classic john yoo piece of work. he rereads all the classics, the romans, the greeks of gustine's and it's almost an open-ended relations but he he reads it completely differently than anyone else. he comes with a different conclusion about what is embedded in the doctrine and that doctrine allows him to make an argument of why you can have a principle of prevention tied to morality and the morality is tied to much more of it classic conception of cost-benefit analysis so he marries economic

theory to international policy based upon the principle global goods. so it's a very creative argument putting together literature you don't normally see together. it's classic yoo so it's a good or bad? like everything else it depends so as my colleague to the left is at the point of the spirit john ridge x. the constant at bellum as being ripped apart from its tradition and therefore our traditional way we teach it right now as you go through the steps of just cause, is there competent authority, is their intention is their probability of success and what is the last resort to use force and finally the proportionality. he really honed in on that. he doesn't talk about the

classic doctrine about how we make proportionality combatants and noncombatants and the other part which i am sir john has become like poser is that they're something we call postbellum so the grapevine of postbellum is go crofts line switches the issues where john was intervene and are very hard, nasty internal issues. i will get to this notion of civil wars ethnic conflicts and borrow the it's hard for americans to stand on the side particularly for many of us who have experiences with world war ii. the irony of scowcroft is intervening in these cases doesn't solve them. it gives you, you win the right to try to sell them. the assumption is that people you're intervening with will

embrace the ideas and values that we carry us americans and the values that we understand the world should be. that is somewhat unclear actually and not only that but the assumption of john's book is tuesday at the high level of what the values are in our interest is how far do you go? one of the great cleavages in the world system is how you treat women? you have gone through quite a struggle inside the united states for equality and equal rights but if you do a certain ethnic groups such as orthodox jewish -- i b.c. women which is not particularly in accord with the way we understand our relationship with equal rights so how far do you want to take what we see is the american way. as you know many are resisting the american way. where do you stand on abortion and where do you stand on the whole range of issues? do we want those? what is the logic of it so when you start at that level of

distraction and you drive down into the specifics that's where the devil is in the details and why you explain that we have not been very good at nation-building. we are good at nation-building when we occupy and whether we like it or not the american way is its unconditional surrender which is the story but we story but we used to do in world war i and world war ii and we occupied germany and occupied japan. the irony about america as we say we worst are negotiations and that's also what that means for the evolution of where we are in afghanistan and where we are with iraq today. so i found the book extremely fascinating as always really putting forward a whole range of arguments that go forward but the logic is where does one understand when one wants to intervene for the common good. the product is the prevention doctrine of the caroline case and the actual phrase which is

quoted in the book which again refers to a phrase you have never seen in literature. it refers to canadian rebels. you never hear of the canadians where people apologize with answering machines rather than the rebels. webster responding to the ambassador necessity of whisnants and overwhelming and leaving no choice of means and no moment of deliberation in the british force in the necessity of the moment authorized terror in the united states and did nothing unreasonable or excessive which i say is that low justified the self-defense of cost-benefit analysis of self-defense must be limited by that necessity and can clearly within. that was simple because the object was clear. they blew up the ship. the object of intervening and

prevention of the national level is much more different than governorship. i will leave you with the same is the problem of sovereignty states and we all agree with men and nations having trouble being effective is that the problem with the nation-state is that it's too big to deal with ethnic problems and problems of identity. and it's too small to deal with transnational problems like the warming warming of the garment of the global environment and we don't have a mechanism but nonetheless the state has proven to be almost extraordinarily resilient because now i'm a closet -- which i believe the status of monopolization of legitimate use of coercive force within a geographical territory and the argument is that if you take the larger analysis you would like america to be an entire state alone.

we will do it unilaterally but as you know it's hard historically to have firepower around the world. so that sort of the deep paradox of the book which is such the principle of morality but then it doesn't have a mechanism of understanding when to exercise that principle in the end what would the world look like based on that particular understandi understanding. i will end with we always agree that wilson was an idealist but the first and only time we elected a president with a ph.d. in political science. and we try not to let people from princeton anymore which is a good rule. >> with that i will turn it back for debate. >> is somebody who has a ph.d. in political science i fully appreciate the fact that i should never be president of the center. john has given me the license to be the moderator so i'm going to

throw in a few tidbits into the discussion. one of the nice things about john's book which i agree is he actually unpacks in a graceful way the scholarship of the literature on just war tradition and it shows i think the property of where it's been taken over the last century and particularly the last couple of decades and it does remind me that in some respects when augustine is talking about just war theory or talking about war, it becomes very analogous to policing. augustine tends to think of military efforts as keeping order. obviously this is within the context of the roman empire. but there is sort of an analogy to what john is arguing about,

the role of the united states and other -- when it comes to policing the world when it comes to wmd and terrorism. so it's a valuable part of the book. it did strike me as a number of things i want to talk about all i have the mic. john also talks about the history of the development of the u.n. charter points out that it conclusively shows the american participants in the u.n. charter is involved in drafting didn't believe that it would be this restrictive than it would have the restriction that would have on u.s. behavi behavior. if we needed to do something, maintain international stability and security there is nothing in the charter they thought which would stop us from doing so. the truth is if i was a realist

the u.n. charter hasn't stopped us so therefore why not go ahead and make them more robust argument based upon the drafting founders and say look we never signed up to this as being this kind of prescription and what's more our practice has followed that along. i suppose the answer to that is americans because democratic people like to have legitimacy and so this issue of having others agree with you that you are doing the right thing is not unimportant. but then i think that also flips into one of the things that i think perhaps john was writing the book now as opposed to a year ago. you have to wonder about it. in the book there's a kind of an optimism about the fact the great powers are not interested in territorial acquisitions. it would certainly seem the case

with russia area that's not the case and we worry on a constant daily basis about whether that's true for the chinese. we have a lot of territorial claims on islands and big islands, small islands, lots of islands and their neighborhood they have not given up. then the question is whether or not u.n. charter as understood actually doesn't provide the kind of useful pause or at least gets their desires and acquisitions a little less legitimacy than otherwise. if we open the door that john suggests one wonders about the effects on those powers thinking about what they can do on an international stage so there's an optimism about the great

powers that it raises in the book in one has to wonder whether that optimism is warranted or whether it's warranted in the decades ahead. this brings me back to my final issue or question. john talks about enforcing the new international order that he is proposing and he tosses out the idea of a the consul analogous to the consulate europe in democracies. but when you look at for example which i think is a really fine interpretation of that cause which is in kissinger's diplomacy book kissinger points out essentially that there are two elements to that, why that system worked. the first one had to do with the coherence between the continental powers having to do with the kinds of regimes and what they thought was legitimate. the second element of course was that in terms of the bonds of power element to that effort

that system depended upon great britain and london taking an active hand in maintaining it. but as we know castle raid failed in that regard and did everything possible to stay away from that active role. and that brings us to today where there is an open question about whether or not if he you did have a console of democracy whether the united states a would have the willpower to provide that kind of leadership. we certainly have doubts about it over the last few years and the second thing of course is these other democratic powers in britain, japan. it's not the case that they are spending much on their military so one wonders about the effect on their ability to help maintain that international order. just as a practical matter while

i accept john's argument about the nature and the flaws of the current system i wonder how effective a mechanism for maintaining what he proposes will be. >> any theorists always generates international relations theory. i remember my good friend bob generated his book the seven different ways you can have ways to exercise authority whether it's offshore balancing or whatever it is. and i say to bob it's great that i'm in the world of what does the force structure look like? we are not that mobile and as you know we are having a drawdown so the interesting question for john is what you perceive as the force structure that would be used and then how do you see the concept of title x in title l because if you look at russia there's a lot of the use of what we call title l using of surrogates by

recognition of the title x. so we could use some food for thought and i guess we should allow you to respond. [laughter] >> there were a lot of interesting questions and points and i don't think i have enough time to respond to all of them so i will respond to some of them. so in response to professor lewis's point the cost benefits being hard i think that's and that's right i don't think it's a reason, it's obviously a reason to it project the approach in its right to say it's difficult to put it into practice. it does remind me of the early criticism of cost-benefit analysis. criticism is getting louder and modern. people make similar arguments today about how deep do environmental regulation and how do you value human life versus precautionary measures about pollution or global warming and

those involved exact same kinds of how the value or how do you know for certain if the life to save? we do view it as a huge bureaucracy at the white house and the office of management and budget that tries to do this but there is an interesting paper that showed across the federal agencies that do cost-benefit analysis each agency has a different value for human life area they are all calculated differently. that's just very hard. i can see that but i think it's the right start and hopefully we will start doing it and get better at it. at least it would allow us to identify the easy data for the system does not allow. libby has a harder case but rhonda seems the easy wear their you could said there would have been a million lives saved if we used five or 6000 troops so you

have the harder ones that are closer there is a huge disincentive to ever lift your finger to help any of these countries to intervene anywhere. kerry makes the point the resources involved are so expensive why should any nation undertake this thankless task so what i try to show in the book is maintaining the system is as much to the benefit of united states as well as our allies and the system that i argue for what have enormous problems because if we do create a force structure and we do take this role we should do the opposite of where the administration is now going. i think we actually pulling back from parts of the world if we enhance our position to play

this more which makes it more of a naval and airpower and less land power which is more in the tradition of american force structure but if we go towards this force structure that intervenes in keeping the balance of power in tap you don't agree but if we do that that's going to call for drawdowns we are seeing that both the president congress seem to agree on right now. the way the system works now is no nation should have an incentive to produce this kind of law enforcement or peacekeeping or this level of war. to harvey's point i think he's quite right that one thing that i lack is a theory of use and bellow and use postbellum and i think one thing is very artificial about the way we

study war. we actually think of those as three distinct subjects are there different rules for each one and you are supposed to when you start a war if throw out and use the laws of the warfighting and went to were done with that toss it out and you get to reconstruction. use a postbellum is law that governs reconstruction itself during the civil war. so part of the analysis to carry forward is the plan. cherry of -- jeremy revkin is in the audience and talks about how to conceptualize the loss in the work that they ought to be connected. you have to have a common analysis for all three and you shouldn't actually think of it as separate and distinct and the reasons you go to war should shape the rules you were going to use once ran the war so i completely agree. i think that's actually the next work to go to. one idea though would be if you

were going to take this kind of efficiency approach to war than it should allow you to use all kinds of warfighting techniques which would be doubtful under the use of gollum. the air force you might recall dropped graphite weapons in belgrade which a violation of the laws of war. unless -- under that theory almost every civilian, food production, electricity telecondition networks markets would all-caps-on piece in the military. >> i don't want to interrupt that we are toying with the idea in cyber to create a separate type of cyber connection for the military to and not use the dual-use as a way of demonstrating the distinction of

combatant and noncombatant but there may be ways of imposing that in cyber. to me the kosovo example shows that you could attack certain kinds of infrastructure without destroying it but it wasn't purely military. it was connected because of the strange way he wanted to fight the war to achieve the narrow end which was not defeating serbia but to get it to leave kosovo. if that's the case if we are at war with kosovo today in serbia what if we shut down their stockpile? no lives lost. much better than dropping real bombs it seems to me that under the current laws that's a civilian target. it seems to me me if he didn't play this kind of global approach that brought together all the types of war you would have to re-examine some of the fundamental principles because

they are dictated by why you went to war in the first place. the last point to get to gary's point before we go to question and answer discussion is there a lot of great points there. on the u.n. charter i do think it may not stop us all the time but if the disincentive. it's a much bigger deal in other countries but to take one example the libyan intervention example this administration want to get u.n. authorization and that delayed our intervention almost until the rebellion was wiped out and today you are a better expert at this than i but people sometimes say that our delay allowed iraqi elements to have a bigger voice in the libyan rebellion and now maybe

president obama, the obama administration did want to intervene anyway and was using the charter is a convenient excuse. it seems to me they seem quite committed to it and it's also in syria to lack of u.n. authorization is the recent the obama administration has been giving for not intervening more directly in syria. i do think it's having some effects may be on the margins. it's just another thing that is added to the cause of this war will lead to political resistance. in the iraq war germany france some of our supposed allies use the u.n. charter is a reason not to help us. it's hard to find cases where it's the sole dictator why other countries aren't that is an additional political cost to going to war war. it's a disincentive when some of these wars they think would be better off if we did go to war. the other thing i think you are

right what does the future look like if you move away from the u.n. charter system and what does the institution look like? it's an analogy to the past. one thing john bolton came up with this idea of nonproliferation initiative which has a kind of system but there is no formal treaty. there is no formal place where they meet by the governments coordinate their actions politically to try to stop the proliferation of wmd. i understand quite successfully. i would think that would be the way to go to start studying those kinds of successful informal methods of cooperation. they are not the towing us when we block north korean freighters with new material on them. if that has been a success we should study that more closely and use that as a model to really build a concert of democracies. if you get rid of the charter

and you are replacing it with nothing you would have these problems up whenever war is legitimate everyone will say when they intervened that the war is legitimate. the russians are saying the invasion of ukraine under international law because they are protecting russian citizens although it sounds a lot like what was said about the plan in 1938. again i think of it as having to do with further development of the idea and like professor lewis says it's very hard because you have to take the navy did -- nitty-gritty details to design a follow-on system. >> thanks john. we will open it up to questions for our guests and please identify yourself and then ask a question. in the back.

>> mr. yoo you have been very active in developing a new norm way of doing business particularly when you wrote the preemptive illegal torture memo for the bush administration. of course it was approved by them so i'm not just blame you. >> i was born in canada. >> you are a u.s. citizen. i'm just kidding. is this book also to create this kind of thinking which is in my opinion to a total barbaric international -- and knott and in fact most of the people throughout the world would not stand for it.

maybe you can convince a few radical right in america and they would probably follow it in afghanistan where they will finally have to be kicked out being told that thank you we didn't need you anyway. thank you. >> actually i don't think this very is going to apply to radical right-wingers. these days my sense of american politics is that the right-wing of the republican party actually wants to withdraw from the world fast. if you look at rand paul is the representative of that wing of the party, the republican party it strikes me very much like the 1930s in the united states and other western democracies. but i think they are radical in that they really want to change american policy. they think the united states ought to do nothing in response to ukraine and the rise of china

and that they would say we have put a lot of money into maintaining peace and what do we get out of the? we get nothing so nobody gets us thanks for saving lives and how we get his criticism when we actually do go to war. so i don't think it's a radical right-wing idea. you are quite right some people will criticize replacing the u.n. charter system is barbaric because it's going to invite great power competition again and neocolonialism again and i actually think gary is right. that era and those countries are no longer strong enough or interested enough. you see france and great britain and germany really using force to try to reimpose this kind of system and i do think the u.s. is different. some of us disagree, think the u.s. is exceptional country.

it's not an empire like the british empire or the french empire or the chinese empire. it's not interested in taking over territory to add to the borders of the u.s.. it does seek to get other countries part of the system of economics and trade than to suppress conflicts are not respected as aspects of an empire but it's very different in the sense that it doesn't try to run those other countries. i think if you look at "the wall street journal" today on the front page it demonstrates that 43 to 45% of the population prefers isolationist policies. the united states foreign-policy since roosevelt on fdr has always had a strained isolationism versus interventionism. it's a classic dilemma and a whole grains of strains that can

be traced back to the founders and different evolutions. one of the things in debate in the united states is we have been extremely expensive tory or bolton interventionism over the last 12 years and we are clear clearly, it's a sentiment in the republic as john has been saying who want to go back. us pulling back one will have to ask what is the net benefit or cost in nation's? one of the examples of pulling back is what's happening right now in the ukraine like we talk about. you are not happy if you were in those countries now because it means you do not have the force to respond. the issue is what will be the united states response at the strategic level? when john talked about when he maybe we went to the missiles i would take a step back. i think what that is saying is you want to give the russians

and the europeans a clear sense that the united states will be serious about stopping the expansion. now different ways that's what that's about. telling the russians you have to pay a cost if you continue to do this and we are serious but that's not the way you should involve international relations. how you do that is the struggle. how you intervened to make a clear to them and to the europeans that they have to stop, we really want to get into a framework. one of the ironies is that we haven't had a nuclear exchange so if you ask shelling what has been the biggest surprise tom schelling schelling will say one of the greatest advantages of international public policy is that when he was one of the creators of mutually ensured destruction they thought by the end of the century they would have 25 powers. we don't.

that issue is we are now at an interesting time and tipping point in that tipping point is creating a new set of incentives and disincentives for how we understand intervention and an area of the world where you came from. the idea of more nuclear powers in that area given the propensity for order makes everyone nervous. that's the big issue of this book is that where would be a principle notion of intervention particularly in the nuclear world where we are very concerned about having a whole range of new countries go nuclear and then we are all staring at each other saying what will happen? that's quite an extraordinary tipping point that this book starts the conversation. >> one other thing, with regard to the claim that undermines the

u.n. charter or removing the u.n. charter is it would not be something that most of the world would accept. while this is not entirely in mind that a good portion of what john is talking about is the justifiable use of force to prevent humanitarian catastrophes which has a lot in common with responsibility to protect. i know his theory is not exactly the same and he would not want to be compared entirely to that of the responsibility to protect something has been debated in the united nations and has been accepted at least in some ways as a modification of the limitations of the use of force. unfortunately in the final outcome documents they then tied it to security council approval bud the initial idea behind the rtv was to say if the security council doesn't act here are

ways that force can be used by regional organizations for the improvement of human welfare in much the same way as many of these that john is talking about in that something the world has approved and not viewed as being barbaric. you can amend or soften the edges of the u.n. charter without being internationally objected. ..

that went into the balkans. it was in a right wing crank that went into north africa. we have a tradition of being barbaric. you can't have it, jeremy. you'll walk off with it. >> i'm sure rat lives. i want to ask about john yoo's theory of global water for your in respect to criteria that view from the other side. [inaudible] it seems to me entirely plausible if you just look at this from a very abstract global welfare points of view to say

this but this is of crimea have been brought into a stronger country with a much more effective central government in any way the majority of them are rationed to him to be happy. so why can't putin say on the yoo theory, yes, it reaches the u.n. charter but he was an efficient reach client >> it is not clear to me that people in that region wanted. one thing you want to not demises reference of the people who live there. it is hard to tell because there was an election, there is a classic soviet election, 99-point whatever purse and voted for the annexation. their only choice was to annex right now for annex a little slower. >> i just want to press you because it is very plausible majority of people in crimea

favored this. it's clear the majority of people in ukraine didn't favor this, but it's not clear which is the can disunity that matters. you might say this is just an inherent problem with global warfare. you can't actually do a global pool of the time, so you always have to wonder, rick tittering the people in rwanda or how the neighbors feel he is the neighbors would've liked the intervention anyway. >> last chapter tries to grapple with this about failed states. [laughter] inserts all after page five actually. [laughter] in that chapter i try to figure out what this means because the two big phenomenon post 1995 world that i thought was a use shop in western interstate work, but a professor or at the time

to sleep in. almost to the point they have replaced the word is almost perfectly replace the number of deaths from interstate wars, not interstate wars. i think that is a problem that you have people who are living together in states which are not typos they and they actually hate each other enough to go to war. the other statistic that is very interesting history of the past 70 years, the united states has permitted this in many cases. the disintegration of states into smaller date. a number of state thomas tripled. many people in the united states at different times of different times about the terrible thing. 1990, 1991 the bush administration opposed devolution of the soviet union in former yugoslavia. interact actually come afghanistan the key country rather than letting him come up higher. actually the case that this is consistent with your criticism

that global welfare is maximized when you let people of common ethnicity and religion live together. if they are going to be better off, part of that is around wishes to some of the harm, some of the deaths will try to maintain nations together they don't want to be together. also where fair let some countries come up higher. is where he disagrees somewhat. i thought the best solution for iraq was to let it devolve into three independent countries based around their religious affiliation and other people 80 i thought it's better to search and keep the country together as a unit. see if that actually turn out to be the long run case. >> let the record show that john yoo and vice president biden are now in this violent agreement. in that the other issue, which was the son of the economist --

said the other event that i would say that is sort of striking about the data we are looking if many people would say this striking event posting a 45 actually the decolonization. so it's the decolonization it helps for the state. jeremy backlist question is so thin it the eg shan't snyder problem, which is what is the size of the unit to use so-called triple making the vote for what they want to do for color dvd? disable maybe the people and crania feel this way, but the people of ukraine now because it's the size of the unit that's the problem. the well-known fact is all modern states are your results of the use of force. you know, when something caught 1862 night 18 x decided i remember quickly. because of the use of force. if you look at england, if you're a bread, if you're a

scotsman and you've heard the year english coming out scott's. i am irish. i didn't voluntarily join this group. almost every entity use in power as a result of the small -- take germany. pressures are one that generated modern germany. so when you start unpacking this issue, the logical way courses ironically canada because we have federalism. canada had done. if they decided to go to self out of its confederation, i don't think ottawa would've used force. true to use force because use violence. if they had been more mentioned in life in this is the ballot box, i think ottawa would've have to add this is the individual at this group. then the question which is the

empire question is with all of the small entities, how do they sustain themselves in a genius at the american logic as you sustained yourself a signing up to her market value, which is another book quoted by john, which is the phil bobbitt announces that in and we move to the market say we don't need to stay. when you state that reinforces economic issues. the problem is the value problem. these different states have different not the groups have come with different values ps i have no interest in moving to china given the values. i may have no interest in moving to india or pakistan or afghanistan given who will take power legitimately and of course the religious use on those people. i'm not interested in madison american. i believe in the wall of separation of church and state, that's almost unheard of. while that is our values and that is what is going to be a take at this issue for nice tired thinking through when you

intervene on how you intervene in what purpose to intervene about value projection you intervene. >> thank you. ted rogan from the heritage foundation. extraordinarily interest being discussion i look forward to reading the book. one of my favorite line in the days as john stuart mills ss intervention. we are in the midst of an extraordinarily erudite. he says he now, how do you deal with the problem of the british empire india any half a line, which encrypted at the out of context. wolf international agent is reciprocity or variance will not reset or k. i'm not, you can generate an analysis which i think is parallel to maybe even close to yours, which is: a lot of other just english relations who are largely on the generally liberal

side, certainly not conservative side of the dais. individuals like burke and which would certainly fall into this category as well. but i was very struck by your comment shows now that you are suspicious of a number of state out there because many of them are artificial in one sense or another. i take the point entirely. this leads me to think that the mere image of your argument when you get a civil war nowadays, with the first response? the u.n. or another group of powers is rushed in with the peacekeeping proposal. they reinforce the existing state. that is what they are there for her. and then the conflict continues because the sorts of proposals never end up resolving the problem. they prolong the war. so i take your point entirely by international law preventing intervention. but international law encourages

a certain kind of intervention, the kind of intervention that doesn't actually bring the war to an end, that doesn't allow england to create united kingdom come and listen well. it doesn't allow pressure to create germany. so does international law cub oath ways? it is to start dave and intervention and also the full intervention. >> i think it's a really great point. i think some laughing response. so there are things in the world of decolonization is one. credit free market if you have an international reach any doughnut to stick together. heat up in the past unit anywhere. the other one, dysphagia of looking at the united dates as a provider of security around the world is another key ingredient to why you are seeing countries for the part. or has been a motivating factor or the creation and nations of

the defenses as a reason to get bigger. if the united despair in asia for example, europe guaranteed peace and why does italy need to together anymore? whitest freshening the german principalities of part of a common germany anymore? so it's very much the united states policy spreading free trade, it actually is a motivating force for causing these collapses of nations. you are quite right i share your criticism that internationalized dominican side. it's trying to reverse this natural decentralization of government around the world and sometimes we act that way as a government we try to keep it. the u.n. system is committed to keeping this data escrow intact. when you have peacekeepers that she wants to keep the u.n.

initiative wanted to keep yugoslavia together. so definitely the part i talk about how to use force in very discreet ways to allow this kind of decentralization of countries to happen more peacefully than a half before. i sort of look at the iraq surge kerry in this part of the book on this introduction is why did the iraq surge work? there were more people they are. they did produce this area of security. it didn't look like anywhere near the numbers that people we actually need to be on the ground to protect the population click was the ballot that one. my argument was the problem with trying to do the occupation was these groups as civil wars, no one forces them to reach any agreement to settle the piece. it's impossible for them to

trust each other. impossible to sign an agreement, but it appeared that the united states and search did as an enforcer of the agreement between the shiite and sunnis in iraq and the enforcer of their civil war environment because then they make a peace agreement about half keep it. but that doesn't mean you have to have huge forces either. maybe keeping 10,000 troops in iraq after the withdrawal for keeping the fourth enough dennis dan rather had polling now could contribute to stability in those countries here to me that is a lesson to draw from the church. that is a narrower use of american force. that not as violent and destructive as full occupation if there is a proportion. one u.s. soldier for every act number -- >> said the issue he opposed and which has john has addressed the values to ask one of the

students of the war colleges from and you think is a revolutionary power? that is the irony. but the issue when you look at what they've been doing in iraq and guinness in, we are doing expeditionary counterterrorism, which is a contradiction of terms. unless you have a center of gravity on the location do you contrast enhanced the legitimacy of the system, you are in a very difficult. because you're building a fan and that is the issue that this book raised as if were going to be doing these interventions. i understand the principle, but the postbellum problem is who is your legitimate entity left on that geographical territory that willis ericsson have the legitimate need to have ordered inside that geographical area to control force? that is the problem and asking dan.

that is a problem in iraq. it is a core problem of no legitimate and we are in a very difficult talks because of that and that is the cu problem in generating the print most based on very sound print of them a very noble thing. that is why this is almost like an idealized scenarios. >> i've got a question. one comment. i won't defend the surge because other people can do that. just on this issue is very safe and in the book, which is we can get type two in the wings with less force than perhaps we done in the past. just sort of the classic line is we'll may let the the iraqi army

stay in place and what we have had the people involved. the truth days, and this is true with other interventions. the iraqi army didn't exist. there was no iraqi army left. it was a bunch of shiite concord and the gang you that you are going to depend upon not force with no legitimacy to sort of maintain order just in the days. not wanting to pick a fight about that particular thing, they just indicate when you do in fact these interventions and you'll must inevitably wind up taking the government down, you are inevitably left with being the government and i think you do a good job in the book of pointing out how much there is involved in that. one of the things that was striking because you covered amendment amount of literature in interesting ways. one of the things that didn't seem to actually be sure to take

and not inserted a serious way with the democratic theory. i mean, i think a lot of the problem you are pointing to an practicalities go away to the degree that the democratic states don't go to war with each other and they tend to wind up being more peaceful and more prosperous. but of course the implication of that is we should be in the access regime change when it comes to other great powers like russia, iran, china. so i don't mean to push you on this 5% iraqis they didn't write, but it does that is one look at the discussion. >> you know, that is a great point. i thought a lot about the democratic theory. is it the 18th century i think the ideas that no democracy is

on to war with another day. a lot of it depends on how you define democracy because there was the war of 1812. i always wonder how this war of 1812 was should've invaded and taken over canada, but we left the shop and done. >> every go with canada again. >> the articles of confederation have a clause to join the union. >> are the smart ones just move here anyway. [laughter] readout in the the rest of them. the next meeting for the americans and the greeks are the romans. that's how they explain i am higher. the night that the british say about themselves than the french. i think the radical implication if it were true with e. we should try to convert as many countries in the world into democracies of possible because then they won't attack. the reason i didn't really thought if no one is sure why it works. there is no real theory about

why the democratic theory actually is true. it is based statistical correlation, but there's no convincing theory that anyone greece about uncaused nation. i had a lot of difficulty in what to do with it because there stood. , but the other thing that's interesting about the democratic theory of you thought it worth each other, but they love attacking on. so if your democracy coming your rate of four is higher been an autocracy over wall because he tried to do what you're saying. >> one of the central themes of your buck is to get war. so that actually if you were to drive project out to try the link used though and the war after the words apiece, that might be actually the third part would be if you really want to get into dignity or to a regime

are you going to try to help create after you've gone to war and then after you thought you were. this does need to be what we try to do in iraq and asking dennis try to go all the way in and restore it with a knee. but i think that does bear back on the first question. if it is customers an essay, you have to factor in the overall cost of the war and the experience of that in a state in iraq if you want to take their because action role on, that this is the cost of the war way up and i think it would in the end produce a lob over intervention or you can still save a lot of lives with a minimal amount of intervention if you're going to be if not take about the regime you are going to leave after. that goes to your point about the iraq army. if we invaded iraq and unlocked, your cost of war would've been a lot lower for the united states and things could have been equally bad. maybe worse.

they be just the same. i don't know. >> john begins the but only the dead have seen the end of war. so if you believe the opening, we can never eliminate it. the yeshiva used to be the notion of only democrat are worthy to remember tom countries like mcdonnell with mcdonald's to go to war with each other. >> you quoted late. >> the issue is there's an underlying assumption that it deep in the dna of the west that if u.s. economic development rises of middle-class is, middle-class dissent for democratic institutions, it is a bad word because war demonstrates those relationships formed between the elite groups

and the people they are receiving consent from can create a very dynamic economic market with a great deal of growth, with a middle-class assault of you for economic stability, which one might argue this russia and putin's economic friend. and then the issue is satisfying. we are willing to deal with u.s. on the use day in a box. if you're willing to maintain the economic relationships with and train and partner, the long game is eventually we enqueue will have internal development and pressure for a more democratic vision. that is the assumption. his work was unclear to me if that working assumption is true then it becomes a different format. one professor used to say it was rush and the united states.

it's a different way of understanding mass integration and figuring out what to do with stability and order. that is the enigma for the book because the book once to intervene on a certain base of western principles and values, but you may have great stability with economic development and nondemocratic regimes, china. to this is one of the more interesting modern-day phenomenon that when i was in graduate will, we didn't think like that. we got stages of growth would be this middle class. that is proven not to be correct , the same way we thought 30 years ago that religion would fade out, the religious ways of thinking about the world was an old way of thinking about it. delete incorrect what's happened over the last 30, 40 years. >> i think we are ready to wrap a period i want to give everybody a final word if they wanted. >> just one quick thing on china

as you mentioned in the donald's theory that two nations having donald's don't go to war. the south china sea conflicts will rapidly test on whether it's china vietnam, philippines, any of those may well find them both breaking the paradigm. the chinese reaction to the conflict they are having with various obesity. the chinese your interest and because they acclaim in the democracies that are dangerous. the democracies like the philippines are dangerous because people have a sway over their government. if the populace wants to go to war and you democratically elect the view of a choice, whereas the chinese don't have that problem. it doesn't matter what our pockets as long. we will do what is right is the claim that if made in the various cannot say that for some

of the other countries around the china sea. obviously the flipside in some ways. >> i just want to thank aei. what is great is the sort of like the ackerman of the conservative movement. he basically explains there will be more based on this but i which is a classic ackerman. i look forward to coming back for books have been an eight in this trilogy. >> i've been insulted repeatedly. first is called samantha power than bruce ackerman. never going to let any of this town. it may cause me to not writing books altogether. >> once in a while based on the headline today there was this for the harvey and kerry referred to this americans are

weary of order. you know what it cost to maintain the system. they don't want to intervene. this is common interest as president he and national security and international law, which was the exact same that dude in the 1930s. economic take it very similar to the interwar. in the united states attitude. it may seem in the 1930s are receiving a lot of money and ended up costing the country and the world a lot more. this is actually a moment where congress itself cannot do the job. you really need presidential leadership to explain it just to the country but if faith. i think franklin roosevelt, as his finest moments his finest moments at work on persuading the american people that they had to bear the burden to make sure the world came on a in on this response ability of the current president. i worry there's a lot of work to keep that we will reach regret

getting it. >> is final, final foot out. not so much in the polls today, but there is a similar one that came out for a few a couple months ago. they have a colleague here who then it is time for the through the pew data. there is the headline from the witches we would rather leave the world alone. if u.s. is second in your question do so want america to be the primo country, overwhelmingly it is yes. do you want american leadership? the there is yes. implicit i'm not as john's point that there is still some things to be worked with that the leadership, not only to press me, as someone who works closely with numbers of congress, only in the last couple months to cut members of congress who are to a

great diving sessions that whitney's to be done it comes to america's defense is. the trendline is potentially somebody picks up the mail and runs with it. listen, i want to thank everybody coming out. it was a miserable day in washington. not that there's been a great is washington, but nevertheless this is a particularly rainy one. want to thank michael harvey, of course john. i want to recommend you pick up john spoke. do not wait for the movie version because they will screw it up. again, i want to thank you all and thank our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]